Horror

You look as if you've seen a ghost: a bright little leprechaun
of sleep who paddles out the door when the light comes in.
I know you find my aversion to horror a bit too much--it's as if
I were painting the walls always some compulsive shade of white--
but I assure you I can accept horror when it has meaning, I just
reject it as an aesthetic, as I reject stucco, or superheroes
who carry guns. I know I have already written this before,
but I'd like to tell everyone just one more time--gather round now--
about the drive home from the movie. About the music, the air
conditioner, the city and the lights. Oh, I've forgotten how to tell
it right already, but I was keeping it for all of you. You bright souls,
who sniff at hayfever season and have offered me sweaters when I am
cold. Another poem to the young past, another all emptied of any horror.
I suppose it must seem fake. I'll tell you what is fake: the fucking and the running
on your video screen, the eager hero and the blood. That is fake, and then we
make tea. I have no aversion to horror, it's an aversion to bullshit horror:
explosions without blood, military without oppression, naked without sex.
And we all walk out in a little line from the picture show, and the movie crumbles
as the world dawns in all its aching sun-filled horror before our beloved feet.
posted by Adam at 1:06 AM [edit]